WND EXCLUSIVE

Illinois demands day-care operators go defenseless

Ordered to advertise that they are disarmed

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

There are classes of people for whom the Second Amendment does not apply. Those who are in mental institutions or who have been adjudicated to belong there. Those who are in prisons or who have been adjudicated to belong there.

And in Illinois, day care-operators.

Not only is the state demanding that they be disarmed, they are being required to advertise the fact that they are defenseless.

The next development was expected: a lawsuit by the Second Amendment Foundation, the Illinois State Rifle Association, Illinois Carry and several individuals, Jennifer J. and Darin E. Miller, against the state over the requirements.

Defendants are Beverly J. Walker, in her official capacity as director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, and state Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

The complaint in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois explains IDCFS policy “substantially prohibits day-care home licensees, and those who would be day-care home licensees, from the possession of firearms for the purpose of self-defense, which violates plaintiffs’ constitutional rights under the Second Amendment.”

“It was our lawsuit against Chicago’s handgun ban that incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. It was another of our lawsuits that forced the state legislature to adopt a concealed carry statute in Illinois,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Bellevue, Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation.

“Now we’re in court to make sure that the state cannot discriminate against day-care operators who merely wish to exercise the rights we’ve restored in Illinois.”

The filing points out the Second Amendment “guarantees the individual right to posses and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” as well as for self-defense and defense of others.

It explains the Millers “are allowed to possess firearms in Illinois generally, but are prohibited by the IDCFS policy complained of herein from possessing loaded functional handguns in their homes so long as they currently are day-care home licensees, or plan to be day care home licensees in the future.”

Because of that warning from the state, they refrain from having loaded guns “because they fear Jennifer’s day-care home license being taken away from them by the state.”

The state rules allow “peace officers or other adults who must possess a handgun as a condition of employment” to have weapons on the premises of day-care centers but not others.

Or if there are guns, they must be disassembled, without ammunition, in locked storage areas.

Ammunition also must be in locked storage areas but cannot be in the same locked storage area.

And the rules require a “no firearms” sign “in a visible location where parents pick up children.”

The complaint alleges violations of the Second and 14th Amendments and seeks an injunction, without which the plaintiffs would “continue to suffer irreparable injury.